With the proposal now notified, Scaife and Byrch could formally object and explain their concerns to a council hearings panel – a right denied them under the original consent.

As Scaife puts it: “When it went to the notified application, we were able to have some input.”

Scaife and Byrch were finally able to negotiate a settlement with Matakauri in October.

When Scaife and Byrch’s High Court review application was subsequently being withdrawn, the council refused to contribute to their costs. Justice Chisholm wasn’t having a bar of that, however.

“It’s inconceivable there was no connection between the issuing of this [review application] and the lodging of the new [consent] application on a notified basis,” he ruled.

“It can be safely inferred that the new application for resource consent was made because of the [Robertson’s] concern that a reviewable error [by the council] might be exposed by the judicial review proceeding,” Justice Chisholm said.

Justice Chisholm ordered the council to pay Scaife and Byrch just over $10,000 towards their approximately $30,000 costs.